Afren

At Afren's Annual General Meeting held earlier today, Chairman Charles Jamieson made the following comments:

"In its first full year as a listed company, Afren has made excellent progress in building a diversified and balanced portfolio of African assets.

Having listed with one asset, the Company today has a portfolio of ten assets across the Joint Development Zone of Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe, Nigeria, Gabon and Congo.

The recently announced strategic entry into Congo provides Afren with immediate production, high impact exploration potential on the La Noumbi licence with 2,830 sq km of under-explored acreage and a share of the Mengo field with 2 billion barrels in place.

The agreement announced on 1 June to develop the Okoro and Setu fields offshore Nigeria, with estimated recoverable reserves of 35 to 60 million barrels of oil, significantly upgrades our near term development portfolio. Together with the development of the Ogedeh field, the Company expects production of 15,000 to 20,000 barrels of oil per day by 2008. Near term development drilling of the Ogedeh and Okoro Fields in Nigeria is expected to begin later this year with a rig contract already secured.

The discovery on the Obo-1 Well in Block 1 of the Nigeria São Tomé and Príncipe Joint Development Zone is encouraging and we look forward to further appraisal drilling in this prolific exploration province.

Afren will continue to pursue its pan-African diversification strategy and use this established base to develop the business into the premier African independent."

All the resolutions proposed at the Annual General Meeting were duly passed.

Enquiries:

Afren plc
+44 (0) 20 7182 1800
Brian O'Cathain  
Osman Shahenshah  

Pelham Public Relations
+44 (0) 20 7743 6673
James Henderson  
Alisdair Haythornthwaite

Background information

Afren

Afren (www.afren.com) was founded in December 2004 by a management team including Dr Rilwanu Lukman with the vision to become the leading pan African independent Exploration and Production company. Since its listing on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange, Afren has rapidly expanded its portfolio and the management team has delivered ten assets in the Joint Development Zone of Nigeria Sao Tome and Principe, Nigeria, Gabon and Congo.

Afren will continue to add to its diversified portfolio of production, near term development and high impact exploration with the overall objective of creating substantial shareholder value.